(Never Break) The Chain
by Abagail Snow
Summary: It is your duty to a new Panem, ravaged by war, to rebuild this country with a minimum of three offspring. One for the mother, one for the father, and one for a soldier lost. Do you accept the duties of this union? Mockingjay, canon divergence


_Day 7 submission for **promptsinpanem** on tumblr for envy._

* * *

On the day the silver arrow was launched and pierced the heart of the former President Snow, a new Panem was born. One, by those who fought for it, would consist of democracy and equality across all the twelve districts. Led by President Coin, Katniss Everdeen was assured that her sacrifices would not go in vain, but on the day of her marriage to Peeta Mellark, Katniss was skeptical that Panem had changed at all.

She stood before a wall of Capitol cameras and shielded her eyes from the harsh lighting. She wore a simple white dress that was limp and made of cotton. It wasn't lavish or spun with intricate detail like the wedding dresses Cinna had beautifully crafted for her, yet it spoke with the same volume.

We of Panem are no longer flippant with our resources. We are disciplined. We are the same.

The steps before the capitol building were not dissimilar to those of the justice buildings, found in each district. Standing beside Peeta before a crowd of tens of thousands, Katniss couldn't tell if she was attending a wedding or another reaping ceremony.

She was lost on an empty stage, following the cues of an extensive camera crew through the rituals of a newly defined ceremony. The officiant pricked their fingers to draw blood, and ran the drops through a machine on the podium.

"The couple has been found to be fertile and compatible," he announced, and all of Panem cheered. "It is your duty to a new Panem, ravaged by war, to rebuild this country with a minimum of three offspring. One for the mother, one for the father, and one for a soldier lost. Do you accept the duties of this union?"

Katniss's eyes burnt hot with tears, but she kept her chin held high. As the spark of the revolution, it was only fitting that her marriage would mark the official end to it, and since each soldier's death lay squarely on her shoulders, it was a duty she was plagued to fulfill.

"I do," she said, her voice hard as stone.

* * *

Peeta was still hijacked.

No one would openly admit this, but the episodes he had behind closed doors were very real.

He and Katniss were given an apartment in the President's mansion, where they, as well as all the other living victors would stay during the transition.

The lighting and coloring of the apartment was different from his prison cell, and much larger too, with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen. It was impossible to tell these rooms were even in the same building except for one detail. Everything still smelled of roses.

On their first night as a married couple, Katniss stood expectantly in the doorway of their bedroom, her hands fidgeting with the pins that held her braid like a crown around her head.

"We need to do this," she said.

All Peeta could think about was the smell of roses. He could taste blood in his mouth and realized that he wasn't being poisoned at all, rather he had bit straight through his cheek. His hands clenched at his sides and his vision went blurry from his pupils dilating.

"What's the point? They're going to knock you up with tubes anyway, that's the only way they can make sure it takes," he said harshly.

He found a sturdy pipe beneath the kitchen sink and chained his wrists to it, laying on the floor without a blanket or pillow. Through the night she cried out at her nightmares. He found it oddly comforting, because he knew then, that she was still there.

* * *

Gale was to be named the head game maker of the Ceremonial Capitol Hunger Games. His military strategy was well respected among the high ranking Thirteen officers, and his creative work with weaponry and snares made him an ideal game maker.

"I only took the job because you voted for it," he said, when news of his appointment had begin to spread.

Months before the games were to take place, he invited Katniss to the control room where he walked her through what would be the last arena.

The setup was still the same. Twenty four platforms rounded a cornucopia at the center, and it seemed that only a flat, barren field surrounded them.

But it wasn't an empty field.

"Beetee helped me with this," he said, showing a force field that mirrored the arena, forming a maze of invisible walls that only resembled an endless field. They wrapped and twisted, giving tributes a place to hide, but majority led to a dead end. Katniss could already picture the smaller tributes caught in a pursuit, running desperately and blindly into wall after wall in search of an escape that would never come.

It was designed for a hunter to catch their prey. For a career to slaughter the weak.

"You'll never understand," she said, her voice breaking with her heart.

Downstairs, Prim was waiting for Katniss in the courtyard. Katniss held her tightly, touching her cheek and tugging her braid. This year, there would be no chance of Prim's name being pulled from the reaping bowl. It was still too hard to believe.

"I'm so glad you're safe," Katniss said, squeezing her hand one last time to be sure.

"It's over, Katniss," Prim said. "You don't have to worry anymore."

But Katniss wasn't so sure.

* * *

Even the doctors that hijacked him didn't know how to fix him. Peeta was their science experiment, and to correct their experiment, they tried even more experiments.

They electrocuted his brain, then filled him with steroids when his neural responses were shot. They tried hypnosis, then shot him up with more drugs to reverse the effects.

He was like a lab rat told to search for cheese in a maze full of peanut butter. Both would keep him alive, but still, they weren't the same. He would never be the same.

It helped to have Johanna and Annie around. Their scars were different from his, but they were connected.

Annie would hum when she was upset and cradle her swelling abdomen. "Finnick used to hold my hand," she said during group therapy. She trembled as she rocked in her chair, her eyes vacant as she stared at the floor.

Peeta reached out and took her hand into his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

* * *

Katniss was used to being poked and prodded after a year of being paraded around the Capitol. Her body hadn't been her own since. It was a hollow vessel used to push political ambitions and manipulate an entire nation into a revolution. Her reflection was a propos invading every home in Panem.

Peeta's hijacking had brainwashed him into forgetting who he was. Sometimes she felt the same way.

She flinched when the doctor stuck another needle into her arm, pulling back the syringe to extract another sample.

This was a weekly examination. They'd fine tune her hormone levels and regulate her weight until she became the perfect living incubator. She would be the prize breeder of Panem, after all, if Coin had her way.

But every exam now ended the same, still no fertilization.

* * *

Peeta tapped the stylus pen against the monitor before him. At the center of the room President Coin was reviewing a list of mundane, meaningless laws that were to be implemented, effective immediately.

Peeta wasn't sure how, exactly, he had been elected to the council he sat upon. As far as he could tell, the council was mostly symbolic, and served no actual purpose in the new government. It seemed, President Coin needed a table full of people whom Panem trusted to agree with her, and some how he fitted that bill.

Most people in Panem didn't know how stark raving mad Peeta was, and that was a detail Coin was happy to keep quiet if it meant having the nation's golden boy on her team.

It was a mostly agreeable arrangement until the agenda turned to the upcoming Hunger Games.

"We've finished compiling the list of high ranking official's offspring, and many perished in the Battle of the Capitol, leaving only 16 eligible survivors. As most, if not all Capitol citizens have played a hand in supporting the tradition of the Games, we will be expanding the lottery to all Capitol children to fill the remaining 8 spots."

Peeta could feel his blood boil in an instant and it wasn't due to an episode.

"How is that any different?" he said calmly.

"Living in ignorance will no longer be a tolerable excuse for turning one's back to atrocities."

His fist connected with the monitor built into the table as he stood, causing the glass to shatter. "Then I refuse to ignore the atrocity I'm seeing now," he said firmly.

The room erupted into chaos at his outburst, and Peeta watched as everyone around him cowered away, terrified of being in the path of the rabid mutt.

"Neutralizing threat," he heard, right before the injection hit his neck and he collapsed into darkness.

* * *

Katniss had a difficult time meeting Annie Cresta's eye. The words "I'm sorry" were simple enough to say, but the actual sentiment behind those words were impossible to meet.

The guilt she felt was crippling because Finnick's death was a debt she could never repay. The best she could do for both Annie and her unborn child was to leave them in peace. They didn't need a constant reminder of what she had cost them.

This promise she made to herself became impossible to keep, however, when she found Annie seated on the sofa in her apartment. She wasn't alone. She sat beside Peeta in a comfortable silence that Katniss had not experienced with him in some time.

She tried not to let this affect her, instead, tending to some dishes in the kitchen, but then, she watched as Annie's gaze grew distant, her trance only broken when Peeta leaned in to whisper something in her ear, just as Finnick used to do.

The delicate china plate slipped from her grasp and shattered in the basin of the sink.

"Do you think? Peeta and Annie?" she asked Johanna some time later.

Johanna laughed at the absurdity, but it didn't put Katniss at ease. "Annie will spend the rest of her life in love with a ghost."

The words stung, even though she knew that was not the intent.

"And Peeta?"

"Do you remember after the Games, when you first got home? You felt like a different person, right? Going through that. It changes you forever, and the other victors - they're the only one's who get it."

Katniss could still recall how painful the strain on her relationship with Gale had been as they slowly drifted apart. Their worlds were so different, it was impossible to hold onto what they had. After the Quell, it was only Finnick she felt she could truly turn to.

"We went through something that no one else will ever understand," Johanna said.

* * *

"Are you afraid of me?" Peeta asked her over dinner.

She pushed around the remaining stew in her bowl and lifted her eyes hesitantly.

"No, of course not," she said.

Peeta looked down at the raw, torn skin around his wrists. So many of his memories of her were still vague, but what he could always remember was the look of terror in her eyes when his hands were around her throat.

He clenched his fist to crack his knuckles then quickly released.

His spoon was too shiny. He didn't want to touch it.

He needed to focus on the good.

"Annie said she felt the baby kick today," he said.

Her eyes flickered with something familiar. Anger. Pain. Sadness. One of those. He used to be able to tell, but now he wasn't sure. Now he couldn't even remember if he was still in love with her.

He flipped the table, sending the dishes clamoring to the floor, then he stomped on the spoon with his foot until his heel was sore through his shoe.

But then Katniss's hand was touching his cheek. He calmed, leaning into her touch.

Had this happened before?

"Real or not real?"

She seemed confused and struggled to answer.

Maybe it hadn't.

* * *

It had been six months and she still wasn't pregnant. Her weekly examinations all ended the same. Although her body seemed perfectly capable of carrying a child, she had yet to conceive.

It was a relief, mostly.

Despite their safety from the reapings, Katniss wasn't sure that Panem had changed. Whatever the country had become, it was not a place she was ready to raise a child.

But her inability to get pregnant was becoming worrisome.

She'd see Peeta beside Annie with her swollen belly. He was gentle with her. His eyes always warm and bright. Like he used to be.

She felt a pang in the pit of her stomach that twisted so tightly she found it painful to stand. What if she couldn't bear a child, as she promised she would? Annie had proven that she was capable. Would they relieve her of her duties and pair Peeta with Annie once she gave birth?

Her fingers clenched into a fist. It should have been her sitting beside him, not Annie.

But then she felt even worse.

It should have been Finnick sitting there.

"Do you think Finnick would have wanted you to take his place?" she asked, and maybe it was petty, but it was the only way to quell her desperate anger.

"The way he took mine?" he snapped back. "She's alone Katniss, she needs somebody. Haven't you ever felt that before?"

She looked away, too ashamed to meet his eye. When he was away, she could only find strength with Finnick, but it was because of Peeta and because of Annie. Never about anything else, not as Gale and apparently Peeta had suspected.

A cold laugh swept through Peeta's chest. "All this time I thought it was Gale. But of all the people hellbent on sacrificing their lives for you, Finnick's the only one who actually went through with it."

"Thousands _went through with it_," she said harshly. Maybe even millions. She wasn't sure how many soldiers died in battle. Or what the final casualty count was for all the war torn districts. For District Twelve alone.

Peeta was quiet then, and so was she.

At her next appointment she overheard one of the nurses reading her chart. "If the intention is to fertilize her, why is she on these inhibitors?" She never saw that nurse again.

* * *

The reaping wasn't mandatory viewing, but it may as well have been. It made its presence known.

Peeta shut the heavy glass window that overlooked the palace lawn to muffle the sounds of children shrieking. For the first time in the Game's history, the reaping was being held at the capitol building, and although it was several blocks away, the voices carried easily through the thick, summer air.

The surviving victors had been set to attend the ceremony. They would sit upon the stage, overlooking the cowering, prospective tributes, as President Coin read the newly established Treaty of Oppression, indicting these children for the crimes of a tyrant. It was justice, Peeta was told.

He didn't care. He refused to go.

It became problematic for the vision of the Games. The nation's victors were their war heroes too, and the primary victims of the Games.

"The victors were the guardians of the tributes, the mentors," Plutarch had reasoned. "They have no reason to protect these children. It makes no sense in this version of the Games. It's designed for retribution. Have the tribute's parent stand on stage. They should be the mentor this time."

The compromise didn't make Peeta feel any better.

He still didn't understand why they were having the Games at all. Why any of the other victors had agreed to it. Katniss especially.

"Coin needed the Games," she admitted, staring vacantly pass the curtains towards where the reaping was held. "It was part of the agreement, as the Mockingjay, that I'd support her."

"Or else?"

"I won't compromise the safety of the people I care about," she said, her sullen voice barely breaking a whisper when she added, "I've come too far for that."

That night though, when he was chained to the pipe beneath the kitchen sink, she came to him with regret weighing her features.

"How are we still here?" she asked. "How are we still alive?"

On this night, for the first time in two years, they wouldn't be taking a train to their imminent death. They were prisoners in another life now.

She tucked herself in the crook of his arm and placed her cheek against his chest, her tears slick against his skin. He could remember this Katniss now. The girl who hid beneath the cover of their sleeping bag to quietly grieve for tributes like Thresh, who was haunted so deeply by those she watched die. Katniss wasn't as selfish as he remembered. She was scared.

* * *

She didn't want to watch the opening seconds of the Games, but at the same time, she couldn't help herself. The normal, dazzling coverage that took place during the pre-Games - the parade, the training scores, and the interviews, didn't take place for the ceremonial Games.

Instead, through the afternoon, after the reaping, the tributes were herded around like cattle, while propos documenting their parent's former government roles played to fuel Panem's lust for Capitol blood.

Twenty four hours later, they were placed on the platforms that would launch them into the Games. No training, no sponsors. Nothing.

Katniss curled herself on the couch and hugged her legs tightly against her chest. Any minute the platforms would rise into the Arena, leading them to almost certain death.

She could still feel the calming warmth of Cinna's kiss against her forehead, but that calmness quickly turned to terror. Her chest began to contract with an anxiety that she couldn't wane. Blindly, she reached out her hand, thankful to come in contact with Peeta's. His grip was tight against hers, offering her momentary relief that she was not alone.

But then she was living out the last moments of her life.

This had happened before in the first arena and then the second, but the most vivid memory she had, now, was her kiss with Peeta on the beach. She had replayed it so many times during her time in District Thirteen, pearl clutched securely in her palm, that the desperation and hunger filled her in an instant.

If she was living in the last minute of her life, she would be standing beside him. Always.

She turned on the sofa and climbed into his lap. Only a handful of souls left on this planet understood this anxious terror of this minute. She kissed him fast and hard, not surprised at all when he met her passion with absolute abandon.

In the recesses of her mind she could hear the countdown clock begin to ticker. She was in this moment though. Shucking away clothing in a frantic fury to seek purchase against bare skin.

But then the clock struck zero, and the tributes began to run, and in an instant the entire Arena would explode.

None of those kids were ever going to get out alive.

Peeta's eyes were wide and unfocused at the scene. His hand clenched tightly at her hip. He was angry, she could tell, but it hadn't triggered an episode.

"Gale?" he said sternly.

She shook her head wordlessly. Gale had been working meticulously at the fine details of the Arena. He wouldn't have gone through all the trouble if he knew it wasn't going to be used.

"It was Coin," Peeta decided.

She didn't want to admit that she agreed. "You think?"

"She didn't want to give them a chance to fight. She wanted to send a message that they couldn't, even if they tried."

She was still seated in his lap, her legs straddling his thighs, and she suddenly found it difficult to meet his eye. Peeta was right about Coin. Katniss had her suspicions, but only now could she admit it.

"I haven't been able to get pregnant," she said quietly. "I think she's behind that too."

Even during the battle against the Capitol, Coin was trying to eliminate Katniss by sending Peeta, still deranged, to her camp. She was threatened by the loyalty that Katniss inspired, and didn't want any competition when it came to choosing a new leader.

Some in Panem would crown Katniss as their queen and Peeta as their king if given the opportunity. An heir would make them even more dangerous.

"Peeta, what have we done? All of us? Becoming loyal to her." She shook her head, trying to alleviate the rising tension she felt. "We're not safe," she said. "We have to stop her."

"We have to stop her," he agreed.

His hand found hers and their fingers locked together.

Together. Once again a united front. And although the circumstances were dire, Katniss felt a strange sense of ease.


End file.
